I'm a poet tree
Water me down to the roots
Carve your name into the bark

I am never leaving
I'll stretch my roots as far as my soul will let me
I'll reach for the sun

(But promise me you'll be there in the shade)

My New Year's Resolution
is not to keep a running count of unfixed nicks and cracks along my foundation
i want to train myself to understand that the blemishes and smudges i see when i look into a mirror are not real because the beholder is broken and the beholder is me.
i want to sit down at a table with myself and have an honest conversation
stop telling myself that my accomplishments are amateur and meaningless
i want to stop wiping my name off the trophies in my brain with nail polish remover
give myself credit where credit is due
i want higher self esteem, don't you?

I spew ink.

My whole life I believed I
Was made of tar
People walking by would leave their shoes behind
I thought that my lovers were stuck there
Caught in the goopy blackness of my stirring soul
I had no beaters, no mixing spoon
And they would gasp for breath on the surface

I pushed them out
I could not stand to hurt them so
Letting them die would be such a low blow
And it surprised me
To watch them leave so quickly
Like they didn't even want to fix me

One boy tried to clean me out with his bare hands once
And the farther he reached, the dirtier we both became
He traced my name with his fingers on my grimy car windows
"Wash me" the message would say
And I would try to shampoo the tar out of my hair

But as I looked at the spattered stains underneath my fingernails
My poetry, black and white
I saw right through my self-told  lies.

I spew ink.

Like an exploded pen in your white shirt pocket.
Look at the beautiful spots bleeding into the cotton.

Please don't leave.
I promise it's just ink.

Are you raising plants from the ground
Are you coaxing foxes from their dens
Are you waiting for the sun to be confident again
(for it to stop hiding because it thinks the moon shines brighter
and it is ashamed)
I need time alone
Need time to sift my thoughts through my spaghetti strainer brain
You took a ****-whacker to my youth, too
And somehow I survived
So I will be still
And close up like a flower
When the darkness comes.

I wrote scores about him
Dipped my hair in paint and left a trail of where thoughts of him would take me
Who knew it would line the entire highway
Dotted lines
Straight lines
All mixed up
I could have written novels of my lonely journeys
The Hobbit has nothing on me
I filled notebook after notebook
Love that he would never see
And I am glad you like long showers
Because lately
I have torn the pages from those notebooks
And watched the ink run together as the water hits the floor.

but what of the men
who work hard
sacrifice
keep their hearts pure?

the age has passed where one would think to honor them

the only recognition comes

in being a working woman
or a man who believes he is a woman
or the man who has feelings for another man

but what of the every day men
who also do extraordinary things?

I do not well up
Do not turn green and rip my pants up

I do not let the world see

I sit on the couch
Eating my lemonheads

Stewing.